'Erik!'
What echo?...They both turned round and saw that night had fallen. Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine kept him beside her.
'Don't go,' she said. 'I want you to know everything HERE!'
'But why here, Christine? I am afraid of your catching cold.'
'We have nothing to fear except the trap-doors, dear, and here we are miles away from the trap-doors...and I am not allowed to see you outside the theater. This is not the time to annoy him. We must not arouse his suspicion.'
'Christine! Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till to-morrow evening and that we ought to fly at once.'
'I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him infinite pain.'
'It is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for good.'
'You are right in that, Raoul, for certainly he will die of my flight.' And she added in a dull voice, 'But then it counts both ways... for we risk his killing us.'
'Does he love you so much?'
'He would commit murder for me.'
'But one can find out where he lives. One can go in search of him. Now that we know that Erik is not a ghost, one can speak to him and force him to answer!'
Christine shook her head.
'No, no! There is nothing to be done with Erik except to run away!'
'Then why, when you were able to run away, did you go back to him?'
'Because I had to. And you will understand that when I tell you how I left him.'
'Oh, I hate him!' cried Raoul. 'And you, Christine, tell me, do you hate him too?'
'No,' said Christine simply.
'No, of course not....Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves,' said Raoul bitterly. 'The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!' And he gave a leer.
'Then you want me to go back there?' said the young girl cruelly. 'Take care, Raoul; I have told you: I should never return!'
There was an appalling silence between the three of them: the two who spoke and the shadow that listened, behind them.
'Before answering that,' said Raoul, at last, speaking very slowly, 'I should like to know with what feeling he inspires you, since you do not hate him.'
'With horror!' she said. 'That is the terrible thing about it. He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.
'When I woke up, I was alone, lying on a sofa in a simply furnished little bedroom, with an ordinary mahogany bedstead, lit by a lamp standing on the marble top of an old Louis-Philippe chest of drawers. I soon discovered that I was a prisoner and that the only outlet from my room led to a very comfortable bath-room. On returning to the bedroom, I saw on the chest of drawers a note, in red ink, which said, `My dear Christine, you need have no concern as to your fate. You have no better nor more respectful friend in the world than myself. You are alone, at present, in this home which is yours. I am going out shopping to fetch you all the things that you can need.' I felt sure that I had fallen into the hands of a madman. I ran round my little apartment, looking for a way of escape which I could not find. I upbraided myself for my absurd superstition, which had caused me to fall into the trap. I felt inclined to laugh and to cry at the same time.
'This was the state of mind in which Erik found me. After giving three taps on the wall, he walked in quietly through a door which I had not noticed and which he left open. He had his arms full of boxes and parcels and arranged them on the bed, in a leisurely fashion, while I overwhelmed him with abuse and called upon him to take off his mask, if it covered the face of an honest man. He replied serenely, `You shall never see Erik's face.' And he reproached me with not having finished dressing at that time of day: he was good enough to tell me that it was two o'clock in the afternoon. He said he would give me half an hour and, while he spoke, wound up my watch and set it for me. After which, he asked me to come to the dining-room, where a nice lunch was waiting for us.
'I was very angry, slammed the door in his face and went to the bath-room....When I came out again, feeling greatly refreshed, Erik said that he loved me, but that he would never tell me so except when I allowed him and that the rest of the time would be devoted to music. `What do you mean by the rest of the time?' I asked. `Five days,' he said, with decision. I asked him if I should then be free and he said, `You will be free, Christine, for, when those five days are past, you will have learned not to see me; and then, from time to time, you will come to see your poor Erik!' He pointed to a chair opposite him, at a small table, and I sat down, feeling greatly perturbed. However, I ate a few prawns and the wing of a chicken and drank half a glass of tokay, which he had himself, he told me, brought from the Konigsberg cellars. Erik did not eat or drink. I asked him what his nationality was and if that name of Erik did not point to his Scandinavian origin. He said that he had no name and no country and that he had taken the name of Erik by accident.
'After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave a cry. What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. `Oh, forgive me!' he moaned. And he opened a door before me. `This is my bedroom, if you care to see it. It is rather curious.' His manners, his words, his attitude gave me confidence and I went in without hesitation. I felt as if I were entering the room of a dead person. The walls were all hung with black, but, instead of the white trimmings that usually set off that funereal upholstery, there was an enormous stave of music with the notes of the DIES IRAE, many times repeated. In the middle of the room was a canopy, from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff, and, under the canopy, an open coffin. `That is where I sleep,' said Erik. `One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity.' The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head.
'Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the walls. On the desk was a music-book covered with red notes. I asked leave to look at it and read, `Don Juan Triumphant.' `Yes,' he said, `I compose sometimes.' I began that work twenty years ago. When I have finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again.' `You must work at it as seldom as you can,' I said. He replied, `I sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time.' `Will you play me something out of your Don Juan Triumphant?' I asked, thinking to please him. `You must never ask me that,' he said, in a gloomy voice. `I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns; and yet he is not struck by fire from Heaven.' Thereupon we returned to the drawing-room. I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat down to the piano. He said, `You see, Christine, there is some music that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it. Fortunately, you have not come to that music yet, for you would lose all your pretty coloring and nobody would know you when you returned to Paris. Let us sing something from the Opera, Christine Daae.' He spoke these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me.'
'What did you do?'
'I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words. We at once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us. I sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror which I had never displayed before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at every note. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing cries. Erik's black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor of Venice. He was Othello himself. Suddenly, I felt a need to see beneath the mask. I wanted to know the FACE of the voice, and, with a movement which I was utterly unable to control, swiftly my fingers tore away the mask. Oh, horror, horror, horror!'
